Episode 160 - Digital Art, Tokens, and Rationalists
Today's Local Maximum dives into a recently popular idea of "non-fungible tokens" to represent art ownership, and also dive into a New York Times article about the rationalist community.
Links
Scott Belsky: The Furry Lisa and the New Economy of Digital Creativity
Superrare: If anyone can download the art file, why would I buy the token?
CNBC: Why Digital Art and Sports Collectibles are Suddenly so Popular
JustInCone: NFT Skeptics Guide
WavesProtocol: NFTs help protect digital arts value
New York Times: Slate Star Codex Rationalists
Related Episodes
Episode 137 on Bayesian Covid Tests
Episode 78 on Bayesian Thinking
Episode 69 on Content Distribution in the 21st Century
Episode 5 on Ethereum and Smart Contracts
Episode 0 on Bayes rule Introduction
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum Episode 160.
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max Sklar: Welcome everyone, you've reached another Local Maximum. Gonna have a little solo show today as we begin the 160s here on Local Maximum. These solo shows are kind of nice. I kind of try to do them every once in a while, so that I just get to talk about—well—I get to practice my monologues, which are notoriously difficult to do. But there a lot of professionals out there who do a very good job of it. I'm getting a little better. It's something I want to be able to do, so there we go. And then I get to do a deep dive on certain issues, do research on them. Maybe I'm not experts on these topics, but hey, I kind of understand what's going on. Well in this case—in the blockchain space—I understand what's going on. And in another case, in mathematics, in media, in Bayesian inference—I know what that is. So we're going to touch on a lot of that stuff today.
First of all, a little bit of an update on The Local Maximum. I have like a ton of interviews in the pipeline. So you're gonna see a lot of interview shows. And I'd like to do another math episode at some point. I was going to do a little bit of that today. But I think maybe those are actually pretty good when I have Aaron on the program because he asked very good questions. So maybe I'll wait on that.
I was going to talk about something that, I don't know, some of you engineers—if you're statistically-inclined, and mathematically-inclined—might find kind of familiar. But it's something that really helped my intuition when I was in grad school, which is the difference between log space and linear space. That is, when did you expect kind of exponential growth and exponential decay? And when can you just expect linear growth? And having a very good intuition on when to expect what, and how to transform numbers that you see, and how to interpret graphs.
Everybody's got to interpret graphs. And sometimes people ask, “Well, well. Give me the log plot.” Well, what does that mean log plot? Or, “I see a hockey stick plot.” You've all seen a hockey stick plot, whether it's climate change. Or basically every company that you've seen that wants to project growth. “We are a growing company.” They're going to give you a hockey stick chart that looks like they have very little revenue, or profit, or users or whatever it is that they want to want to project. And then all of a sudden it shoots up.
Well, there's, first of all, just because you see that doesn't necessarily mean that they are on an unstoppable path to success. You have to ask a few more questions. And so that's something that it's good to have a good intuition for. I mean, with that stuff, it's a lot that you actually have to learn about the business and what's going on. But I think there's also a mathematical component to it where you have to kind of learn to think in terms of “What space am I in? What mathematical space am I in? Is it a rate? Is it the count? Is that—what does that mean?” So I think we can get into that at some point. I'd like to do that on a future show.
Today's show, first, we're going to talk about non-fungible tokens, which is this big thing in the crypto space. It's an old thing, but it's coming back with a vengeance. What does that mean? How is it different from something like Bitcoin where you're just purely on the blockchain? I hope to give you a little bit of understanding about that today. It's going to be—can it be—is it like the panacea to help artists and track digital goods? What does that even mean? Digital art...digital goods? Will it, kind of, make it easier for people to sell these things on the internet? Or is it already? And these are kind of important questions to ask. Hey! I don't know. Maybe someone out there wants to buy some digital art. Maybe you would like to support artists, and you are hearing about this new thing. And maybe it's worth talking about what this is all about. What is everyone trying to get into? What are the pros and cons, etc. So we're going to talk about that.
And then finally, I'm going to talk about this article in The New York Times about the rationalists, which is some group that they say is out in Silicon Valley that I didn't know about. But it's people who preach Bayesian inference. Of course, some of the people that they mentioned with regard to that preach Bayesian inference. So what? Well, we have to pull apart what's the meat, what's true, what's the New York Times speaking, and what can we say about it, given my love for Bayesian inference as a problem solving tool. And it doesn't mean that everybody who professes to use it is—I agree with—of course. But it's really interesting to see how the New York Times covers these subgroups. I'm going to talk about that a little bit.
AlL right. So that's a five-minute introduction. So let's just—let's just get started. So first of all, what is a non-fungible token? I have been lurking in the crypto space, in the Bitcoin space for a very long time. I found this idea actually comes up time and again. It's not a new idea. In 2012, 2013, people were writing about this idea called colored coins. I'll link to an article about that from 2013 from Danny Bradbury at CoinDesk. So this has been worked—in the works—for the last eight years. The term colored coins, I guess, has gone into fashion in favor of non-fungible tokens.
Of course, when they were talking about colored coins, they were talking exclusively about Bitcoin because Bitcoin was the only game in town back in 2012, 2013. Maybe not the only game in town, but one of the only games town they're like, “Okay, what if we attach meaning to certain specific bitcoins?” That's what they mean when it's non-fungible. If it's fungible, that means, “Hey, I have Bitcoin. You have Bitcoin. Let's swap. You send me yours, I send you mine.” Same with Ethereum. And it's like, “Okay, we're even.” Nothing has changed. It's like I give you $1, and you give me $1. We are both evenly as well-off, or we are equally poised to do the same as we had before. Like, there's no change in the state of the world, if that happens.
So colored coins, which is now called non-fungible tokens—non-fungible—it means that these coins that are transacted that...actually, they're different. They're all different from each other, and they all correspond to something that is going on in the real world. So for example, I mean, I don't know why you’d do this, but let's say that I had a lock on my door—on my front door—and basically, that lock only opens if I sign a transaction with this colored coin. If I can prove that I'm the owner of this colored coin, I send it to the door, and then the door opens. I can only go through that door once. So that—I guess, that's something you could do. I don't know why you do it. But people have been looking for reasons to use this thing. And one of the reasons that have come up is kind of digital art.
A lot of the ideas that have come out of this is—a lot of people—some of these blockchain conferences for a long time, Blockchain videos, blogs...the blockchain can replace the notary. You can prove that data existed before a certain point in time. And you can prove that a certain person created some data, so why not apply this to art? I mean, that way I can prove who owns the digital art and who created it. Or at least, if I kind of register the digital art in a—if I create something. Like I am—for example, let's suppose I create something an MS Paint. I create a very nice—I use the spray paint tool. And I go, wush, wush, wush, wush, and I'm like, “Yes, this is modern art. Beautiful.” So I want to take the file, and distill it down into a hash. I could put it into the blockchain, and boom, I can prove now. I mean, don't worry about—too much about how that works. But now I can prove that, “Hey, I had this thing at this point in time.” So if I'm the first person to register it on a blockchain, then I could show that I'm the creator unless, of course, I forgot to do it. And then the second person did it. But let's put that aside for a second. So, all right. Great. I can prove who owns digital art.
Now, there are certain reasons maybe to be skeptical of this. Because the great innovation with something like Bitcoin is that it can't be duplicated. The Bitcoin—owning a Bitcoin—is not the same as owning a file or a piece of data because if you own a piece of data, then you know that data can be copied infinitely. So Bitcoin is not—it's actually not information that you own. It's like information that you have access to in the database, but it's not something that you own. And so, digital art by its nature is something that you can copy again and again and again. Although it would be interesting to challenge a digital artist to create a piece of art that is not like that. Maybe that is kind of a challenge there. But look, traditional art, whether it's a song, or an image, or something like that, or a 3D rendering, 3D world even—whatever it is, it's pure information. And so it can be broken down into ones and zeros. It can be duplicated again and again and again.
So if I were to—so I totally understand being able to register it. “Hey, I came up with this in the blockchain. I got there first, and I get bragging rights.” That I totally understand. But the question is, let's suppose I make a piece of art and I say, “Hey, I want to limit it to a hundred people who can enjoy it.” Or I want to say, “Hey, an unlimited number of people can enjoy it and download it. But I want to make sure that everybody who downloads it and enjoys it pays me. How can you do that? Is that possible?”
So, I've been reading a lot about this, because it's like—because it's hard to wrap your head around. A few comments on some articles I read from Scott Belsky on Medium. He's obviously a believer in this thing. I quote, “This NFT…” NFT meaning non-fungible token. “This NFT world is likely the greatest unlock of artists opportunity in over a century. This isn't a sub optimal or fringe version of the real world. Art economy, it is a vastly improved one.” This is—I should link a link to this. This is the article about the Furry Lisa, which is a derivative work on the Mona Lisa. But of course, Leonardo da Vinci was not able to get his—slide his thing. It's a blockchain. No, that's fine. That's another question, actually. Derivative works—what are the rules on that? I guess it's going to be complicated. But he gives eight reasons why this is so great.
First of all, anti counterfeit. So again, while I can make copies of art, I can prove that I'm the owner. So that really helps. And maybe you could make different contracts that say, “Hey, I get to enjoy it for a life—for forever—if I pay this amount, or I can rent it for that amount, or I can give it to friends.” I don't know. So, what does this mean for—So let me try to break out what this means. I did a little bit of thinking of this.
So first of all, is this anything more than just a token of authentication from the author and nothing else? Like acknowledgement of proof that the author created this art? And then you kind of trade that token of authentication around let's say, the author buys and sells to someone, and sells it to someone else, and then I buy it. Then I'm like, “Hey, I own this piece of art. Although there's not much I can do about it because people are copying it freely.” Well, that's one way of doing it. Would people actually trade like that? A second way as well, what if I needed the token to view the art? In other words, the art is there on some blockchain encrypted and the only person who can unlock that file is the person who owns the token.
Now, I think—and unless there's some crazy workaround to this that can get it to work, which I would be very impressed—I think that, okay, that's doable. You could say, “Hey, once I own the token, then I can download that piece of art, and then I can be—ensure that I'm the only one who has it.” I mean, first of all, you'd have to somehow be able to look at a preview or something so you know what you're buying. But, or maybe it could just be, “Hey, but people like this author so much they’d want it.” But it's not—it's not like Bitcoin, because...where it's ironclad. And I'll tell you why. Because any of the previous owners could have also unlocked that art. And so now they have it on their hard drives. They could be passing it out. So there's now—maybe they want to give you assurance they're not going to do that somehow because then when they sell it to you, they can—you’d be willing to pay a lot more. So that's another possibility.
And then a third question that I want to ask is, what if some of these tokens are lost? So for example, let's suppose I can wrap my head around the idea if someone loses their Bitcoin, okay? It's like losing money. You lost a bunch of money but there's nothing in the—it's not like if you lose the deed to a house, nobody will ever be allowed into that house again. It's completely off limits for all humanity for all time. That's not how the world works. And likewise, if you lose money, yes, you lose the money. But it's—think of it as kind of a donation to everybody else who has Bitcoin. It's no actual economic goods or services are removed from the economy because that happens.
Whereas with this token, if you have a smart contract going that's distributing art, and then all of a sudden the artist loses the token. Let's say they're getting paid every time somebody downloads that piece of art, and it's all working through the blockchain. And let's say they lose their token, so now they can no longer get paid. Would you be willing to pay for that piece of art if the artist lost the token, and that money is just going into a black hole? People might be like, “Well, what does that mean? Nobody gets to enjoy that art again? Does that mean that nobody gets to—what happens? Or does that mean that people, will they—will just pay into a black hole?” Well, I think—I've been looking for some answers to these questions—and I think I've found them. So...well, I think a really good blog post that I found was on a blog called SuperRare on Beta Cent where I think they're actually selling these things. What they asked is, “Why would I buy a piece of digital art on SuperRare when I can just download the art file for free? Am I missing something?”
So apparently, in this case, they are selling art, and they're selling digital art through NFTs, and that art is also available to be downloaded for free. So what are they doing here? Here's their answer: “On SuperRare, each tokenized artwork is created directly by the artist using their cryptographic keys to create the NFT. Thus, it is the artist intended the original collectible digital artwork is the token. Yes, anyone could download and view the image for free, but they don't own it. And they can't gain value from it without owning the NFT as well.” Now, no gain value is kind of an interesting term. Like some people would say, “Hey, I gained value just by being able to see the image. That's all I want to do. So why would I buy it?” And for those people, maybe. But let me continue. “As a collector, you want as many people as possible to be downloading and enjoying the artworks that only you probably own because this is how the artwork gains value.” So imagine if 1 million people around the world were featuring an artwork that only you only on digital frames in their houses, that is a piece of art that has real value.
So this is interesting in that—now I've seen these digital frames before—they are like small screens, or maybe larger screens that you could put up in your house, and they display art. And maybe the art can—maybe it's art in motion. Maybe there's some movements around. So it's kind of like—it could be like a Harry Potter type thing where the guy or gal in the portrait can wave at you or something like that. And you can swap through your different pieces of art on that frame. And maybe it's built into the frame that, hey, only things that are going to be displayed on that frame are things that this person has the rights to. Maybe they don't own the token, but maybe they're paying the person who owns the token. They're paying the—either the artist directly or the collector that the artist ended up selling to.
So that to me still raises the question, why can't I just create a digital frame that can show me any piece of art it downloads? I mean, after all, I could probably trip out a computer screen to do this, and any image I download can be shown on that. But hey, let's remember that iTunes still works even though you can’t hear any of that music for free. I mean, people have both—they both download songs for small amounts of money, and people also have kind of subscription models that take a monthly fee and then do payouts to different artists. And people have been doing that for many years.
So, and it's sort of undercut the kinds of—well, it was sort of a compromise between the free song movement started, kicked off by Napster and the ancient music industry that wanted to maintain things in the same way, when you have something like iTunes that Apple came out with. It's like, “Yeah, we're gonna make it just really convenient and really easy for you to buy songs.” And then later on other companies like Pandora, Spotify, and Apple itself come out with subscription models as well. So it's a convenience model. It's a “do right by the artist” model, and it's just, “Hey, if I am an art enthusiast and I want this in my house—then this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to subscribe to it or I'm going to buy it or, or whatever, I'm not going to try to bootleg it.” Even if it's legal in my country to do so. I don't know what the laws are around here.
So also—so what I think is going to happen, or what I think they're aiming for is like, “Yes, you could download this stuff for free.” The work needed to get around the barriers will be considerable because all of the digital art frames that are created by companies that want to sell you art are going to have a rights management system. So unless you kind of build one yourself out of a computer meant to rent a bootleg art. I mean, if you're pro artists, you know, who would do that? Maybe. So, I think that that's kind of the model.
And you would need voluntary compliance on top of the blockchain. The blockchain—any blockchain can prove who the artist is. It can prove who started the token. It could prove who owned the token now. You can think of the token as the piece of art, as the colored coin, as NFT, that non-fungible token. And so you can prove that you paid that person. So that could tell your digital frame, like, “Hey, throw up this artwork.” But it does have—it does require a little bit of voluntary compliance on the part of the people who build the hardware, and the buyers, and sellers to abide by all of these rules. Whereas, when you get into kind of the pure—kind of Bitcoin mindset, it's like, “No, you can't get around it 100%.” So it's a little bit of a different mindset, I think between the two groups. But, hey! This could work. This could work. So it's very interesting.
If you have any thoughts on the idea of non-fungible tokens, on the idea of digital art, please let me know at localmaxradio@gmail.com, or comment on The Local’s Group: maximum.locals.com. I think—I don't know—I've never had a digital picture frame. But after reading all the stuff about it, maybe it's something that I like to get. Another article posted up on CNBC and FTS: Why Digital Art and Sports Collectibles are Suddenly so Popular. So this is definitely in the popular consciousness right now. So definitely—and an NFT skeptics guide, of which I am one. I'm sort of not—even though I'm saying it could work—I'm sort of like asking all these questions. So I'll definitely post these up. And I hope you enjoy and I hope we will take a look at this topic as we continue on our future Local Maximums.
Okay. The second one is this article in The New York Times that came out a couple weeks ago in mid February. Such a weird story on the rationalists. This is a New York Times article a couple years ago that some folks have been talking about. It's the one about Slate Star Codex blog written by Scott Alexander, who discontinued and moved his blog after being outed with his full name over the summer by the New York Times.
So now they have another article about him. I initially didn't follow this. I just saw just more shenanigans from the New York Times. Another blogger doesn't want his real name out there for obvious reasons and familiar reasons. I have my real name out there for The Local Maximum, hasn't caused me any problems yet, but you never know it. I'm not oblivious to the fact that there are risks.
But I heard—so I wasn't following this. But I heard there was some discussion of Bayesian inference in the article, which I talked about—I talked about Bayesian inference a ton. I mean, we started that on episode zero. So let's see it. This was brought to my attention by some of the folks on Local’s page maximums.locals.com. I'm not familiar with the Slate Star Codex blog. So whatever secondhand information I get from the New York Times, of all places—well, I'll give that it's due. Wait, let me just put it that way.
So the New York Times just starts out by describing the blog, and the community around it, the commenters as politically-mixed with a few extremist characters built in, but they are the minority. They also say, “The blog was also at the epicenter of a community called The Rationalists—a group that aimed to re-examine the world through cold and careful thought.” And there's kind of a tone here that New York Times like “Woo, thought, be afraid.” But okay. Careful thought doesn't sound that bad. The New York Times wordsmithing a little bit there with the word cold. Like they're gonna, I don't know. They're, they're gonna say, “Hey, it's…” Well, every single ideology and crazy group that kind of thinks that their ideas are rational, I shouldn't say every but but a lot of them do. A lot of them have justification. So it's like, maybe thought without—the implication is it's thought without consideration of morality, or emotion, or whatever. Now, I suspect that that's not true. I suspect that a lot of the people they're talking about are actually not only engaging thought, but are thoughtful about it. But we'll see. All right, they continue on.
The New York Times says the rationalist community and their articles are astoundingly verbose, with which is—if accurate—is probably why I haven't read a lot of this stuff. Quote, “They challenged the popular idea and upheld the right to discuss contentious issues.” So my reaction is, “I like to think that I do that here.” Actually, I think that most podcasters, and bloggers, and independent creators, and talkers, or whatever you want to call it, do think of themselves as challengers and upholding the right to discuss contentious issues, like what would you do if you're a blogger or a podcaster? Who wants to do the opposite? If you only take conventional ideas, and sort of make sure that the discussions don't get too uncomfortable, what would you do? Maybe go work at the New York Times? For all I know. I don't know.
So, anyway, they call this particular blog—-the Scott Alexander blog—Slate Star Codex blog—A Window Into The Silicon Valley psyche. And I think that that is a crazy phrase coming from the New York Times because they're talking about this small group of people as embodying Silicon Valley, where it really doesn't. I mean, and here's an interesting quote that kind of gives you a sense of how the people—the New York Times—think about Silicon Valley. Whereas, I think that the ideas and thought processes of most people in Silicon Valley, most engineers, most executives, etc., etc., etc., are probably more in line with the New York Times than in line with this so-called Rationalist subgroup.
But here's an interesting quote from the New York Times, “At Twitter and Facebook leaders were reluctant to move words from their platforms, even when those words were untrue, or could lead to violence. At some A.I. labs, they released products, including facial recognition systems, digital assistants, and chatbots, even while knowing they can be biased against women and people of color, and sometimes spew hateful speech. Why hold anything back? That was the answer a rationalist would arrive at.” Now, if you've been in Silicon Valley, this is—-if you've been in a big tech company, or a small tech company, startup, anywhere, if you've been talking to people—-this is the thought process of everyone is completely the opposite of that. Twitter and Facebook were not reluctant to move words from their platform.
How could the New York Times even write that with a straight face? They've removed a ton of stuff. I mean, we've been documenting this on The Local Maximum for two and a half years, and it's been going on longer than that. And what we've documented is, we've just had a few discussions about it. There have been lots and lots of more discussions about it on the internet. It is widespread. They have an entire high-tier teams of people dedicated to removing words from their platforms. They took a—-Twitter took off the President of the United States. They're very reluctant to take people out. I don't know. So, and the idea that AI can be biased is certainly the—I mean, look, it's certainly there. But the idea that no one talks about this in big tech is crazy. It's like every other talk we get is about that. So okay, I can't believe that this is what the New York Times actually believes in. But let's go on.
The tech industry, again like I said, is probably more in line with the New York Times’ most people in it. So let's get into the bases. So that's not really the reason why I'll take a look at this article. By the way, the article is very long. I'll post it if you want to see it in localmax radio.com/160. But I won't get into the whole thing. I just...let's just get into the Bayesian stuff because this is where it gets a little weird.
So I talk about Bayesian inference a lot because—-and the reason why I think about it a ton and have been for 10 years is—-because it's an incredibly effective method to approach first machine learning problems and statistical problems. Those that I thought about in grad school and deployed successfully at work. And second, it's a great tool. It's a great problem solving mechanism to solve real world questions, real answers. Real questions and solve real world problems. World is a hard word to say when your mouth gets garbled.
Anyway, the Bayesian inference is closely linked to the scientific method. In fact, it is a form of the scientific method. So all of these associations that New York Times writes about, they need to be considered independently. Just because someone says, “Hey, I'm using the scientific method,” or “I follow it in some area of my life,” that doesn't mean that everything that that person says is science. And if it's crazy, that doesn't mean that, “Oh, well. I guess science must be wrong.” And same thing, “I guess, Bayesian inference must be wrong because that guy is a Bayesian, and they're nuts.” So I mean, that's—this sort of, like, association trick of the media plays. It’s something that you can’t point out enough.
So let me read a little bit more from this. “The roots of the Slate Star Codex,” because let's actually hear about what this group is like, “The roots of Slate Star Codex traced back more than a decade to a polemicist and self-described A.I. researcher named Eliezer Yudkowsky, who believed that intelligent machines could end up destroying human kinds. He was a driving force behind the rise of the rationalist.” By the way, I am not too familiar with Eliezer Yudkowsky’s works, but I've read a couple articles. I've had—I've tried to have them on the show. I couldn't get any response yet. “The rationalists saw themselves as people who applied scientific thought to almost any topic. This often involves, quote, “Bayesian reasoning” as a way of using statistics and probability to inform beliefs.” And so it's interesting, by the way, this article talks about Bayesian reasoning as if it's some shady thing. But it links to an article from the New York Times. I think it's the science section that extols the virtue of Bayesian reasoning. As the scientific method, like, let me write how to think like an epidemiologist. So it's basically saying this is from August 2020. Say, talking about how Bayesian inference can be used to think about COVID data, in an epidemic data that, and in like, a positive sense. So in the science section. So it's not shady, according to the New York Times.
So it's interesting, the rationalists—they write because the rationalists believe that A.I. could end up destroying the world—not entirely novel fear to anyone who has seen science fiction movies—they wanted to guard against it. Many worked for and donated money to MIRI, an our organization created by Mr. Yudkowsky whose stated mission was “A.I. safety.” So already, there's this kind of unspoken inference in the article about Bayesian inference. That Bayesian inference leads to being worried about A.I. taking over splits. That's kind of a pretty big leap.
So there's people who say, “Hey, Bayesian inference/scientific method is a good thing. I think that should be a broad range of people that to be like, kind of a good sort of operating platform that we can have discussions on,” and then being worried about A.I. taking over. Well, that's only people who come to that conclusion. And that's sort of a—that's a very contentious conclusion. I mean, I wrote, we've talked about how Elon Musk is very worried about it. But there's some other smart people who were not worried about it. So who knows?
Okay. New York Times also wrote, “The community was organized and close-knit. Two Bay Area organizations ran seminars in high school summer camps, on the rational way of thinking.” Quote, “The curriculum covers topics from causal modeling and probability to game theory and cognitive science. Read a website promising teens a summer of rationalist learning. How can we understand their own reasoning, behavior and emotions? How can we think more clearly and better achieve our goals?”
Again, I just want to point out the New York Times using some articles—because, first of all, this sounds like a really cool summer program. I'd like to go just from that description. But the New York Times says, “Hey, the website was promising teens blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” It almost sounds like it's misleading them and leading them into some kind of cult is what they're saying. So, it's hard to suss out what's really going on and what the New York Times is trying to imply. So they'll say, “The rationalists held regular meetups around the world, from Silicon Valley to Amsterdam to Australia. Some lived in group houses. Some practiced polyamory.” Quote, “They're basically just hippies who talk a lot more about Bayes’ theorem than the original hippies,” said Scott Aaronson, a University of Texas professor who has stayed in one of the group houses.” So I don't know. Look, I don't know. I have not met anyone in this group.
My approach to Bayesian inference is not based on what this group is doing. Although it sounds like they have some like smart ideas coming out of it. And then it sounds like there are some people who are trying to smear it. But they're not really...they're not like that. I mean, they're just like, okay, hippies that talk about Bayes’ theorem. I mean, I don’t. Like so weird. Some are—some practiced polyamory. Like, okay. I've never heard that in like, oh, Bayesian-ism leads to polyamory. But it's like, what exactly is the relevance of that statement? If I were to talk about my company, Foursquare, and I said, “Hey, some practice polyamory…” Well, look, I don't know if any of my co-workers practice polyamory, but I'm sure if you took 600 people, you'd probably find a few people. So like in any group, so that's just a very weird sentence to put in.
Again, I think, I guess now my point is just the New York Times is just being awfully shady in the way that they're talking about this. And so I certainly don't read this and read, “Oh, here's a group of Bayesians I need to avoid.” This is like, “Oh, here's a group of Bayesians that I kind of want to learn more about.” I probably don't agree with them on everything. But, hey, hate peace from the New York Times, not a bad thing on your resume. So like, it's because you're trying to kind of a guilt by association, because a lot of what—and even what the New York Times is saying—like a lot of what they are talking about sounds like a reasonable thing to do. Oh, they're covering topics from causal modeling and the probability of game theory in the cognitive science. Oh, my God. Look at these people, they're gonna make millions of dollars when they apply this to financial modeling and advertising. But like it's some kind of creepy thing. But then they say, “Oh, the other part of it is strange. It's very different from us.” But it's like, New York Times. Who cares? I know I don't.
Okay, so I'm just gonna round out this section with, “For Kelsey Piper, who embraced these ideas in high school around 2010, the movement was about learning ‘how to do good in a world that changes very rapidly.’ Yes, the community thought about A.I., she said, but it also thought about reducing the price of health care and slowing the spread of disease. Slate Star Codex, which sprung up in 2013, helped her develop a “calibrated trust” in the medical system. Many people she knew, she said, felt duped by their psychiatrist, for example, who felt who they felt were unclear about the costs and benefits of certain treatment. That was not the rationalist way.” The implication is, it's the rationalist way to question things.
Well, how, who can argue with questioning things? It's kind of a weird thing that the media tries to do, where they say things that sound reasonable, and then they say things that are kind of hit pissy. And by putting it together in this way, they could say, “Well, it's balanced. We said good things and we said bad things.” But it's just, I'm having trouble articulating it. But there's kind of a weird way in this cutting in the way those good things and bad things come together that does not—it doesn't work. And they kind of make very reasonable things like, I don't know, questioning—like asking questions about the world sound awfully shady. So anyway, I just want to talk about that.
If you have further comments. Talk to me at localmaxradio@gmail.com, or let's have a discussion on The Locals Platform: maximum.locals.com. The article goes on and mentions Silicon Valley names like Peter Thiel and Sam Altman. I'm not going into all this but I will say there's kind of this implication that those people are the embodiment of Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel, but Peter Thiel is kind of an outlier in Silicon Valley. So in terms of like the way he thinks. I read his book, Zero to One, and he has very interesting views of business, and he's done very well on, as an investor. So Sam Altman, I know, was a big random Foursquare competitor in the early days. So that's an interesting name to come up.
Yeah, I don't—this is all very interesting. It's the first that I'm hearing about this group, which honestly just sounds like a summer program to learn stuff, and go to kind of go to colleges, and learn about math and style. No, I did those summer programs. They're great. But who knows what we'll find out about this in the future.
Alright, tons of guests coming up. Like I said, I already did one interview from someone who's really had enough of this social media censorship. And he says it's not gonna stop there. He's very concerned about it. So I'm gonna play that—I am going to have—I've got another one on Bitcoin that I'm doing this week. And I've got another one on A.I. that I'm doing this week. And maybe I'll have an interview on Locals I'm doing this week. So tons of interviews this week. Looking forward to it. Have a great week, everyone!
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